Dear United States of America RE: Debt to China
 

How does it feel being 800 billion dollars in debt to your rival nation that is the People's Republic of China?

I am interested in your thoughts and feelings.

:cmbirthday:

You were right. This is a terrible first thread.

Aint it so!

So about that panda...

Why must China be a rival? Both need each other!

Americans need to borrow money from China so that they can keep buying cheap things from China!
China needs to keep loaning money to America so that their things can remain cheap so Americans can borrow money to buy them!

Why can't everyone just be friends? :(

Don't be silly. This is the internet!

I'm talking about China and Americans here, chief.

Grossman... China... I see where this is going.

http://funkatron.com/content/im-goin-deep-fan-club.jpg

Well, at least the USA is getting in on all the FDI.... even if it's only in IOU form.

You've got to build Disneyland with something...

Nope. China's not getting into the equity portion (FDI) of your international accounts, at least not in a major way ($1.2 billion in 2008). They're going into the liability portion instead (as OP has stated, around $800 billion of gross government debt as at September 2009).

Source (Pg 33-34 of PDF)

We still have more missiles and a bigger Navy.

But, we need to keep borrowing money to keep it that way.

If China wants to keep selling Nikes, it's in their interests to keep loaning us money.

Well yeah, the US did prove that by spending another several billion by bombing the moon to prove a point.

If anyone's interested in the total amount of the debt the US is in, outside of what they owe China.

Look no further: U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

Several billion huh.

I was unaware 0.079 constituted several, now.

But it's equivalent to over 5 billion Chinese yuan, so you can see how he gets confused.

How could anyone think they'd ever give NASA billions of dollars in funding these days?

I just don't see why everyone has to make a gigantic fucking deal about it being China in particular. Instead of saying "We have a debt to China," they should try "We have a debt." Yes, it's a single-party state, but it busts its balls to be seen as a responsible power that people can trust to be a team player in global affairs. If anyone has any interest in the matter, go read China: Fragile Superpower. There's more to fear from its fickle population than its Communist government.

Because letting a satellite crash into the moon equates to dropping a bomb on its surface. amirite?

Fucking USA man, what did the moon do to you?

Who said we're going to pay it back...muwahahaha!

Looks like we're all going to meet with a terrible fate.

Yeah, it sucks to be in so much debt but the Chinese people are the real losers. The Chinese basically keep the value of the American dollar artificially high vs. the Yuan so they can export more cheaply to the U.S. It works, but it also becomes more expensive to import anything of value into China. What you have, in effect, is a country with legions of unskilled labour toiling away in factories for next to nothing and not having any of the luxuries availible in the West.

The so-called burgeoning middle-class in China is such a small part of the overall Chinese economic picture that it's not even worth talking about. There is virtually no consumer economy in China because national income is tied up in either savings or investment. A bit of that is cultural but a lot of it has to do with official Communist Party doctrine in investing perpetually in production, for the mere purpose of surpassing the U.S. on paper but not offering any real benefits to its population.

If I had to choose between being Chinese now and being an American, I still think my life would be 100x better with the latter.

Move to Russia. Countries are still intimidated by them, believe it or not. The sleeping bear. Have you ever been attacked by a nuclear bear? Me either.